When the idea for the live webcast came up, the thought was that live meant people at the event, live in person, taking video, pics, and doing updates as often as possible. I just assumed everyone would realize that its not "television live" where you could watch real-time. Financially, that would be a huge undertaking. Im fairly positive that for the amount of money that would take, sponsorship would have been very hard to come by. We talked to one of our sponsors who had hired a satellite truck previously, $5,000/hour for live. Thats just for the truck.
This was our first time running an online webcast of this magnatude. No matter how much setup you do, and we have been working for months, there are always problems that arise on site.
Case in point, our broadband connection to the beach just didnt work out as originally planned, too many trees and houses in the way. We ended up talking to a local resident that was out watering his lawn, and after trip to Best Buy and wiring his house with wirless internet, he let us use his broadband connection. So everything may not be perfect, but we are learning a lot.
Tomorrow we will have onboard cams on 3 boats. Today was too light to use them. And of course, we will have more interviews.
